Constellate literary journal
Welcome to Issue Seven of Constellate Literary Journal.
We are now accepting submissions for Issue Eight.
Issue Seven Jun – Oct
Issue Four, March-June
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Content Warning: Please be aware some works cover sensitive topics.
FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS
Lorelei Batch, Bar Fight, Poetry
Ginny Hogan, A Door of a Different Color, Short Fiction
Mya Rowe, Surreal Art
WAKE UP TO YOURSELF, Aviva Treger
Right now, I’m sitting in a queue about to have my memories erased, and soon they’ll be lost forever — such things are inevitable, I suppose, or so they tell me; but in these last few minutes, while I still can, I want to recall the day I first saw her, before it’s all gone; and when it’s all gone, as a common courtesy, maybe for the time being, you could remember it for me, on my behalf — at least until the moment comes when you have your memories erased too.
Is there a word for how the heart
Sinks, before the conscious discerning
That there is something wrong?
One spring morning, I found
Our tortoise silent, despondent like
A stone. I lifted him with fluttering
Gerania, L. Ward Abel
Blinds left ajar at night
allow full-moon to cast
on gerania
so that maybe the likes of
red and pink
can rise.
Even a sliver of soul
bounced off
the Sea of Tranquility
Strempler’s artistic production includes collage, drawing, painting, object art, photography, and digital photomontage.
A Door of a Different Color, Ginny Hogan
The block could be so beautiful if only Maeve had a bit more credibility. The streets were wide. Trash cans successfully domesticated the garbage. The hedges were decently trimmed. Decently.
Two doors down from Maeve stood the Faucet house, with bright purple pots that outshone its grey door.
Inseparable, Ann Weil
In the hallway,
your straw hat hangs
from a hook,
waiting
for the morning walk.
In the kitchen,
the chipped mug,
tea-stained.
girl crush, Lara Wickenkamp
There is solace in the way the moss hugs the stones that make up the wall outside your house. It has been there before you and it will be there forever. I used to think they look soft, white like big bread bellies, especially when they steamed early in the morning.
A Constellation of Bruises, Praniti Gulyani
today, my mother teaches me –
to arrange my bruises along the landmass
of my limbs, and to let them twinkle like stars
that tenderly kiss, the flame of autumn
Pandemic Recipes, Diana Raab
On my poet’s stove today
there are ten pots, each with
a word or a metaphor that stews
and awaits the next clear day.
Stuck, Lorelei Bacht
White nights – these days,
Hard to determine whether
It is day or night. The moon
Dressed in dirty grey
Boohwan Jung is a nature photographer from Korea.
The Story of Our Life in Seven Shades of Love, L. P. Melling
Red is the start. It’s the test workbooks in science class when we look over at each other and learn about wavelengths of light. The quickly scrawled love letters that ignite our lust. The polka dots of my white dress on our secret first date when we meet at our girls’ school gates and watch the sunset together.
March 19th at sundown, Yoana Tosheva
I wonder what I must look like to you:
naive (I hate that word) and low and rough around the edges (I’m sure).
Always on my second cup of coffee and still asleep.
I am two weeks shy of 21 and have never been in love.
Tearing, Jim Ross
When you break a bone badly, and it mends,
but does not meld exactly, is not flush
one part to another,
you break it again, or let it
be broken for you,
because you trust, and accept,
it must be re-set.
Bernard Artal is an urban sketcher and graphic designer from France.
Tunnel Vision, Kate Maxwell
That was definitely a scream. Even through my earphones, I heard that. Not the thrilled squeals of all those losers outside, paying to be tipped upside down and pummeled into the wind. A proper, hairs have gone up on my arms, scream.
Culture War, Ceinwen Haydon
Last week, her main man, Dom,
scribbled a note in her cookery book
on page forty-two, ‘Poacher’s Stew’:
Sorry to go, but you know I can’t forgo
eating fish ‘n’ chips out of greasy paper
in terraced streets, at closing time.
PS I’ve pinched your malt vinegar
The Last Weekend in July, Zach Murphy
It was the summer of 1993 and Keilani and I sat by the crackling fire as the bullfrogs croaked a sonorous symphony, the grass swayed from a whispering breeze, and the stars zipped in different directions across the vast night sky.
“What a weekend,” Keilani said, resting her hands on the back of her jet-black hair.
The Island, Federica Santini
The water is pleated with silver,
a breathless quiver on its smooth fabric
the only mark of the life below.
From afar the oblique coastline glimmers,
Heliopause, Zachary
Isolated as a star lone in the canvas black sky
frigid and tiny,
Unfamiliar to the many, unseen to the few
The Ferocious Seagulls of Cornwall, Sage Tyrtle
I nudge my baby brother closer to the edge of the cliff. Waves smash. “Pretty!” Noah says, and pinwheels his pudgy hands.
“Hands out,” I command, and give him the greasy newspaper.
Erica Storm is an illustrator, pianist and fairy tales lover.
The Weight of What Matters, Charlotte d'Huart
There are boxes upon boxes upon boxes in my mother’s garage, creased and slumped and practically groaning, their flaps ajar like idiot mouths, sighing dusty sighs. The boxes are labeled: KITCHEN, BEDROOM, BOOKS, PHOTOS, MUSIC, TOYS. But the words are scratched out again and again, overlaid, amended, updated into meaninglessness.
Grandma's Hands, Sarah Ferris
Low palms capture light in their long
boney fingers and maiden hair fern nestles
in shade, waiting its turn to feed
and I wonder why, why am I so tired and
have to suck in my stomach
to button the pair of jeans that used to
hang at my hips, and I think about
mother’s middle-aged friends–
Chemotherapy, Edward Lee
He stops, the razor
halfway down
his foamed cheek,
and wonders why
he’s bothering
with this submission to appearance.
My Son Cooking Lemonade, Jonathan B. Aibel
You can read the recipe
but don’t understand measurement,
and you wouldn’t choose to follow,
Anyway, I put water, juiced lemons
and sugar syrup into cups
for you to pour; you taste
everything.
bob chorba, Lisa Reily
clatter of stones and light water,
aquamarine peace before pine-hidden mountains,
the bracing air, a restorative tonic;
we follow cobblestones, empty walnut trees
and iced-over puddles into the old town
Italy, Leslie Dianne
Sometimes they fed me
pasta: spiraled fusilli
straight ahead spaghetti
gnocchi so heavy the earth
lowered itself and slowed its orbit
tagliatelle fattened with egg
rigatoni rigid with tradition
Melina Hänser is a traditional artist based in Germany. She loves to capture an eerie atmosphere in her paintings by using ink and watercolour.
A Normal Day, Pamela Cottam
In the woods outside my home, seven deer roamed amid the downed timber and burgeoning spring growth on the forest floor. Daffodils, blown by some errant breeze, grew in clumps among the thick carpet of dried, brown leaves. From the heavy winds that winter, two tall trees had cracked and rested their falls against neighboring lindens and oaks, temporary support before their heavy trunks succumbed to rot and gravity.
little thistle blues, Milla van der Have
when i grow up i want to be small again
small like a rainforest
small like the letters on the back of your hand
: blues on skin, a spell against forgetting
Migrant Worker Morning, Moni Brar
daybreak stretches, seeps into corners.
plump mandarin sun, organza sky.
ants scuttle from empty tin. fresh rotis
wrapped in aluminum foil, mango pickle,
Steven Hornbuckle weaves texture and photography together to form something entirely new.
Poem beginning with an erasure of Baudelaire’s “A Hemisphere in Your Hair, Karen Neuberg
and there I am, seeing myself again
nervous as I glance in the vestibule mirror
and open the door to our house.
A Purple Poem, Praniti Gulyani
there is a purple poem
on my mother’s neck
that my father writes for her
every full moon night
instead, most poets write on paper
but my father writes on mother’s skin
she smiles, she says she doesn’t mind
Haze, Ron Riekki
In the Navy, they made me pick rabbits
out of the barbed wire, the fight of it,
insisting on staying out in the sun even
though they were dead, not wishing to
enter into the bag that I was in too.
Velibor currently lives in Vienna, where he paints abstract art and writes poetry and prose.
Mya Rowe
Mya Rowe is a Surrealist painter from Sandusky, OH. A graduate from Cleveland State University with a Bachelor of Arts, they aim to create works that show dreamy landscapes that house anxiety, various mental states, and queer experiences.
Tsurikawa is a Japanese artist that draws nostalgic and sorcerous artworks.
Alex
Alex is a self-taught artist from Ukraine. They mostly draw watercolor, digital portraits and fanart. People and emotions fascinate them, and they love to draw something relatable to themselves and others.
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